Trump

Posted by Nathan Harris194sc on February 10, 2017

Markets For Change CEO Peg Putt 11th November 2016, in reaction to the election of Trump as President of the USA.

As the world reels over Trump’s victory, many people are saying that they are shocked into a desire to ‘do something to make a difference’ – but what?At Markets For Change we have an important piece of the answer: markets campaigning.

What is it?

We go direct to companies and consumers with a call for change instead of relying primarily on politicians to adopt and act on policies to combat climate change and forest destruction. The demand driving the destruction can be shifted.

Does it work?

We’ve had successes and hope for many more. If people and companies won’t buy the product, profitability and the underlying rationale for that exploitation vanish. The market fine tunes its requirements away from environmental damage. Sometimes politics follows by adopting the new norm.

We did it with our work in the Japanese market on Ta Ann’s product that drove logging of Tasmania’s high conservation value forests. Now we are pressing Japan’s housing markets to remove from their supply chain the destruction of the forests of Sarawak, Malaysia. Stand by for our next round of exposure and market pressure.

We’re doing it with our campaign to electricity retailers in Australia. To date no large forest furnaces – burning logged native forests to generate power – have been built here. Much effort has gone into persuading electricity suppliers that they don’t want to be implicated in the rampant forest destruction involved.

Everyone gets to do something

Markets campaigns are also powerful because we give you the tools to take action – when you want to, not limited to your voting opportunity just once every few years. A great way to counter that dispiriting sense of disempowerment in the face rampant wrongs.

Today when so many of us are feeling dismayed, we wanted to say that we simply have to get smarter and take all avenues to save our planet and treat its people kindly. Using markets to make change is an effective path that sits alongside political action.

Want to get involved?

Go to http://www.marketsforchange.org to learn how. You can sign our petition to stop Japanese housing companies driving the destruction of Sarawak's forests, you can volunteer as a Cup Conscious Champion with our Cup Conscious Cafe movement and you can help make Australian renewable energy forest free by joining our campaign against forest furnaces.